Posts Tagged ‘encouragement’

Who can truly listen to someone who is lost in their creative process? The artist has a project – right? To find a way to let her little light shine? Everyone of us, like the artist, faces this dilemma everyday. Each one of us possesses some lovely fragment of a greater mystery. And this piece […]

After scanning through brief words from Thomas Edison, George Bernard Shaw, and Bruce Lee I settled on a quote from Vidal Sassoon – “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” I held my phone up to display the quote to my daughter who promptly asked, through a mouthful of blueberry […]

I wish all of you could see this happening – young artists at work. Creative liberty is the intuitive goal driving the production of art here. And, of course, not one kid in our after school studio would describe it this way. But our job isn’t to wait until they can wrap language around their […]

Today, at Indianapolis Public School # 58, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, we explore the work of the painter Elizabeth Murray. We’re interested in how Ms. Murray’s images might inspire us as we produce our own visual artwork? “We” are a group of elder elementary students who are just a few months away from becoming […]

In the studio at three a.m. the work begins to make sense to me. I start writing sentences that reflect what’s going on with the paint, oil pastels, the graphite, and the new forms. It’s all of one thing – the discipline, the refusal to quit, the difficult themes, and ambiguous subjects that keep me […]

Making mistakes is tough on one’s self image and essential to one’s self transformation. Mistakes are a part of everyday life. When we “brand” ourselves too brilliantly there isn’t any room for “failure” in the images we project of ourselves out into the world. Back in the day this was called “Keeping up with the […]

This work is soft color pastel on black paper created today by a student at Indianapolis Public School 58 named after Ralph Waldo Emerson on the city’s east side. The school has quotes from Emerson’s works all over the hallways. Stuff like, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you […]

Most theaters are dark places – mostly no windows kinds of places. Small theaters of this kind are called “black boxes” because when the lights are turned off the place is black. (This is my own naming theory.) Theatre and performance artists want black places so they can bring in their own flashlights and lamps […]

When we established Theater of Inclusion fifteen years ago we were focused on identifying the skill sets required to open up open dialogue. This meant boot-strap problem-solving. This meant paying close attention to how individuals expressed themselves. We had to back up and back up some more to look carefully at how people exhibited their […]